Short Summary

The Soviet Union announced on Saturday (20 October), an amnesty for jailed mothers with children and for juveniles, to mark the International year of the Child.

Description

The Soviet Union announced on Saturday (20 October), an amnesty for jailed mothers with children and for juveniles, to mark the International year of the Child. Another Soviet event dedicated to the Year of the Child is the Fourth All-Union Children's Sports Games, called the "Start of the Hopefuls". This year's finals were held in Artek, the Young Pioneer Camp in the Crimea, between the first and the twelfth of October. The camp, on the Black Sea, is the first of its kind in the Soviet Union and began in a small way in 1925. Today it boasts five camps, three of which function all year round.

SYNOPSIS: The pioneer camp, this year's site for the games, is set up to welcome up to twenty-eight thousand Soviet children and about a thousand from one hundred other countries, each summer. The All-Union games began with four preliminary stages held throughout the Soviet Union during the past school year, and ended with these Pioneer camp finals. The games were created to promote Soviet sport and health activities. And by involving the young on a wide scale, they are designed to find the budding athletes-the "hopefuls" for future Olympics.

Some one hundred and thirty teams totalling more than three and a half thousand athletes from eleven to fourteen years old came to compete in the finals.

Hundreds of thousands of veteran athletes, trainers and sports directors were involved in the nationwide competitions preceding these finals. The competition involved some eighteen million schoolchildren from city and village schools, as well as those from "sport" schools.

The finalists comprised equal numbers of boys and girls.

Some of the events measured endurance, and strength, rather than athletic skill.

The team effort was stressed, and girls faced the same challenges as boys.

The winners of the individual events were awarded gold, silver and bronze medals. The two best schools were presented with sets of sports equipment.